Heavy Metal (1981)
Multiple animation studios contributed individual segments under different supervising animators. The film made approximately twenty million dollars on a nine million dollar budget.
Movie Reviews (Page 70)
The Day of the Triffids (1962)
The Day of the Triffids is the British apocalypse film about ambulatory carnivorous plants invading a world that has been blinded by a comet. Steve Sekely directed most of the film, with Freddie Francis uncredited for the lighthouse subplot.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
Buckaroo Banzai is one of the strangest films Twentieth Century Fox released in the 1980s and one of the most beloved cult artifacts of that decade. Peter Weller plays Buckaroo Banzai, a neurosurgeon, particle physicist, samurai, race car driver, and…
Demolition Man (1993)
Demolition Man is one of the funniest action films of the early 1990s and one of the most accidentally prescient. Marco Brambilla directed in his feature.
Barbarella (1968)
Barbarella is the late-1960s French-Italian science fiction sex comedy that became a cult artifact more for its visual identity than for its plot. Jane Fonda plays Barbarella, a forty-first-century astronaut sent to recover the scientist Durand-Durand, whose Positronic Ray weapon…
Independence Day (1996)
Dean Devlin co-wrote with Emmerich. The film established Will Smith as the dominant summer blockbuster star of the late 1990s, set up Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's career-long partnership producing disaster spectacles, and refined the destruction-of-iconic-landmarks visual template that subsequent…
Men in Black (1997)
Ed Solomon wrote, loosely adapted from Lowell Cunningham's Aircel/Malibu comic. The film made approximately five hundred and ninety million dollars worldwide on a ninety million dollar budget.
Under the Skin (2013)
Under the Skin is one of the most uncompromising science fiction films of the 2010s and one of the most divisive. Walter Campbell co-wrote with Glazer, loosely adapting Michel Faber's 2000 novel.
When Worlds Collide (1951)
When Worlds Collide is the early-Cold War apocalypse film that established the planetary-impact template for the next seventy-five years. The screenplay by Sydney Boehm adapts the 1933 novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie.
Escape from New York (1981)
Escape from New York is John Carpenter's dystopian action film and one of the foundational works of 1980s post-apocalyptic cinema. Carpenter directed and co-wrote with Nick Castle.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Bong directed and co-wrote with Kelly Masterson. The film made approximately eighty-six million dollars worldwide on a forty million dollar budget.
Want Your Book to Read This Well?
The craft notes in these reviews come from the same eye Richard Lowe brings to books. He has authored 113+ books and ghostwritten 54+ more across fiction, memoir, and nonfiction. If you want a book that respects the reader the way the best films do, start with a conversation.